Yatterman, part deux!

Yatterman (aka Yattaman, aka ヤッターマン)
2009, Dir. Takashi Miike
IMDb

Reviewed by Gaz, 9:43pm (Pacific), Tuesday, August 4th, 2009


Megavideo is finally cooperating, so here we go!

the name of the squid robot is actually イカタゴサク which, as far as I can tell means squid...タゴサク anyone else care to contribute, be my guest

sorry, I'm not being as funny now. I'm mainly focusing on listening to the Japanese (the reason I'm watching this in the first place [aside from the fact that Sho is adorable and the theme song has been stuck in my head all day])

oh no! the cute flying robot disappeared

I'm not sure, but this plot might somehow involve time travel

these comments are probably a lot funnier since I can't understand most all any of what they're saying

Yattawoof may have been destroyed, but here comes his successor made from his spare parts-- Yattaking!

who is too big to fit through the doorway

Yattaking is also silver and thus bears less of a resemblance to Clifford the friendly dog

quite a design flaw, Gan-chan, building a robot that, in addition to being too big, makes its pilots carsick

in the vein of オジプト (Ogypt, the fake Egypt), we have ハルプス (Halps, the fake Alps)

can it be?? the abominable snowman?

oh, no, it's just a giant underground... gate... thingy... made of gears

man, Sho is super cute in this movie. I want to either snog him or snuggle him

I have a feeling the Big Bad is revealing the main plot points right now, but I have no idea what he's saying

Yatterman's weapon is a kendama (Japanese ball-in-cup toy) that turns electric when he says the words へんなマジック！ (hen na majikku!) which means weird magic

The villainess just revealed herself to be somebody's daughter. damned if I know who, but it's probably important

Sho, you're doing a pretty crap job of protecting Ai-chan from the evil energy blast if you're on the opposite side of it.

ところで (btw), I love the way Japanese people say "energy" エネルギ (eh-ne-roo-gee [hard G])

In Japan, pigs say "bu! bu!" In English, they say "oink! oink!" In France, they say "groin! groin!"

stop giggling, infantiles

aaaaand Yattaking is down

and his mega-ultra scooby snack is too heavy for Yatterman to throw into his mouth

for a guy whose day job is making robotic toys, Gan-chan kindof sucks at mechanical engineering

you wasted too much time slow-running, Yatterman! you gave the squid robot time to recover!

let's see what kind of crazy robots Yattaking barfs up!

the squid robot has a perverted-looking flowering belly button that squirts out spring-footed shark robots to do battle with...

...the flying fish robots from Yattaking? at least, I think that's what they are...

they fly, anyway

actually, I don't think the bad guys are sharks after all, they're like bass or some lameass fish like that

but they transform into mecha bass!

to be specific, they transform into "出世魚" which my online dictionary translates as "fish that are called by different names as they grow larger" wow, I'm SO glad I looked that up

and it's too bad, so sad for the flying fish

so what do they do? they go all teary eyed and kamikaze the enemy, of course

the 出世魚, not yet tired of fighting, turn on the giant squid robot and TEAM DORONBO IS BLASTING OFF AGAAAIIIN (skull-shaped cloud)

wait, what? the skull-shaped cloud is sentient? and is actually the Big Bad himself, the skull headed monster that face-raped the guy back at the start?

he does a little dance like he has to pee... and he's dressed in this black stringy garment that looks like he has film strips hanging off of him.

he also just fell down the stairs. why are Japanese villains always so cartoonish??

wait... I'm talking about a cartoon. nevermind.

girl: "Otousan!" Yatterman: [...pause...] "eh!?"

so, when it looked like Big Bad was raping the dude in the face what he *really* was doing was absorbing his body... by sitting on his face.

oh no! Baddie is going to unite all the pieces of the evil glowing skull rock thing!

...that apparently has been the whole point of this movie

girl: "Otousan! stop!" Baddie (with dad's face): deeeeenied! *punches her in the face*

oh how touching. the daughter of the possessed guy is able to get the guy ...unpossessed. like that doesn't happen every friggin time there's a story involving possession

except the one I'm writing, of course!

she's now pulling her dad out of the Big Bad's open skull by his teeth

poor Waluigi is in love with the villainess. them and the pigman make up the ever-phail TEAM DORONBO

when Ai-chan is pulling villainess out of the shiny-evil-timespace-continuum, I can't tell which of them is making the strenuous grunting noises

GAH! 12 minutes left and it's still buffering

apparently it's now time to play volleyball with the glowy-evil-skull-rock-that-was-the-whole-point-of-this-movie

aww, Yatterman and Yattergirl are making the shape of a heart! destroy evil with love, kiddos. love in which the male partner has been hitting on at least two other female characters during the course of the movie. that's an evil-destroying kind of love.

btw, the dude who was face-raped possessed by the Big Bad is actually the Japanese version of Indiana Jones, whip and all

except, of course, that Indy wouldn't have let himself get face-raped

OH! Yatterman and villainess share a knowing look, hinting of future "accidental" kisses to come! bad news for Yattergirl!

To clarify, Gan-chan transforms into Yatterman No. 1 and is played by Sho Sakurai from Arashi. Ai-chan, who is supposed to be his girlfriend and isn't played by anyone important enough for me to know, transforms into Yatterman No. 2. Yatterman and Yattergirl are just easier to write.

oh! character designs in this movie were done by the same guy who worked on Cutie Honey and Blood: the Last Vampire! One of which I want to see, the other of which might be my next Real-time Review

the poor piggy robot is left at a dark crossroads (literally) saying "kowai! bu! kowai! bu!" (Scary! oink! Scary! oink!)

OH GOD THE GIRL IS CLIMBING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN FACE FIRST IN A FLOWY DRESS WHY?

Hooray! the end credits are set to Believe, by Arashi, aka the song that's been stuck in my head the whole day and what gave me the idea to watch this tonight.

That was fun! Hopefully this idea will take off!
It would certainly make taking notes for cinema class screenings a whole lot more interesting, anyway.